11 for ’12: Doug Ming asks, “Are we alone?”

On the cusp of 2012, I’ve invited 11 of the greater Houston area’s top minds to contemplate the world’s end. Lightheartedly I’ve asked them, before the Mayan apocalypse, for the one burning question that they’d like to see answered before the cataclysm. A new entry in the 11 for ’12 series will be published each morning during the holidays.

For centuries humans have looked to the skies and have asked the question,“Are we alone?” Does life exist elsewhere in the universe or is it unique here on Earth?

Ming. (NASA)

NASA has several missions that address this question. The recent discovery of a planet in habitable zones around a distant star by theKepler mission is a step closer to finding Earth-like planets where life as we know it might exist.

Closer to home, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover Curiosity is currently en route to Mars and will arrive on the surface in August. Although MSL is not a life-detection mission, we are going there to look for all of the things that are necessary for life such as water, organic compounds and nutrients.

Curiosity is much larger than the previous Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity that arrived at Mars in 2004. Opportunity is currently exploring the rim of a large crater on the plains of Meridiani Planum. Opportunity has lasted for years longer than planned and continues to advance our knowledge of the history of wateron the red planet.

Mars science is driven by that age-old question: Are we alone? Could life once have developed there? Could life have persisted there? Could life still persist on Mars today?Perhaps Curiosity’s cameras will image a “dinosaur bone” that indicates that life once persisted on Mars and may be there today.

So, if the world is going to end in 2012, I would want to know if there is life somewhere out there. If there is life elsewhere, then perhaps we can find comfort in the fact that life will persist in the universe as our world disappears.

To see other 11 for ’12 entries, click here. And you can click here see entries from the 11 for ’11 series that I published a year ago.